Road Trip up the West Coast of South Africa

Our recent road trip up the West Coast of Cape Town took us to a variety of ‘bays’, starting with Grotto Bay. Now compared to the east coast which has spectacular natural beauty with mountains, forests and beautiful and varied coast line …the West Coast is STARK!

Our destination was Langebaan a coastal town built around a salt water lagoon which was formed in the pre-historic times by rising and falling sea levels. En route we stopped for a leg stretch at Grotto Bay around 60 km’s outside Cape Town.

Sweep of coastline at Grotto Bay @Fempower making her way to the beach

If she had to lay on the rocks I would never have found her.

The tidal pools had plenty life in them ranging from mussels on the rocks to anemone’s of various types.

OK already, I am trying to improve my presentation … The main picture we turned the anemone over and one can clearly see the small mouth

We ate lunch at a small place just outside Yzerfontein which I covered over here and then continued to Langebaan.

I took a few pictures of the lagoon and the houses around there… nothing worth sharing here. A distinctly unmemorable place unless you are into ski’ing and/ or fishing

We checked into our accommodation which was a guest house on the outskirts of Langebaan and headed into town to check the place out. We ate dinner at a place which was unmemorable so I did not even bother blogging about it.

Sunday we headed further up the coast to explore, covering Stompneus Bay.St Helena Bay, Veldrif, Laaiplek (our favorite spot on this trip, Saldhana and Dwarskersbos. Lunch we had at Paternoster a very popular ‘arty’ village. Our dining experience I covered here

Laaiplek Beach… the sun is so harsh on this coastline it is difficult to imagine

Laaiplek harbor

Laaiplek (loading place in Afrikaans) got its name from its function – a place where fishermen could come and offload their fish

There were a myriad of birdlife in the harbor mouth, Flamingo’s, Cape Cormorants, the ubiquitous Sea Gulls, Terns and even a Blue Crane

Blue Crane messing around with sea weed (Kelp)

Cape Cormorants heading out to sea. These continued past us in their hundreds while we stood there. The photo is not great as the sun was very bright and I could not see my settings

On the outskirts of Laaiplek there is a salt producer which we were quite surprised to see, and the lagoon was full of Lesser Flamingo’s. Apparently they love salt water and the salt is responsible for the pink tinge.

Anyone for salt?

Now there was a lot of stark beauty but further on we came across some really ugly stuff…steel foundries at Saldhana Bay. In the following pictures have a look at the color of the plants from the fallout.

For square kilometers around the dirty brown plants are battling to absorb sun. Apparently if it should rain the plants all have natural color … the debris gets washed off

Not much more to add to this story except our impressions of this part of our country. Not overly impressed, even the small casino we visited in Club Mykonos was disappointing. We will not hurry back

Thanks for reading as always!!